Fed up with ‘Greenmail’, Chevron rightly strikes back

Americans have largely ignored this long-brewing scandal because it took place in Ecuador, but it’s been extremely important to international Big Green, the fossil fuel industry and nervous governments trying to decide whether to appease eco-agitators or keep energy tax revenues flowing.

Chevron is suing lawyer Steven Donziger and a number of activist environmental groups in a civil-racketeering suit, claiming that his landmark $19 billion award against the oil company in an Ecuadorean court was the product of a criminal conspiracy.

Ironically, much of the company’s evidence comes from footage shot for “Crude,” an award-winning pro-Donziger documentary that premiered with much publicity at the Sundance Film Festival.

In an eight-year suit in Ecuador, Donziger and his environmentalist allies argued that the oil company had wantonly polluted the pristine Ecuadorean rainforest, creating vast areas of poisoned land and causing huge spikes in cancer and other diseases.

The case drew vast media coverage, with pieces in The New York Times, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker; a sympathetic “60 Minutes” piece featured the poor and sickly Ecuadorean peasants. And celebrities like Daryl Hannah embarked on some cancer tourism, hugging natives before taking her Chevron-powered jet back to Hollywood.

An Ecuadorean court found Chevron responsible for massive pollution and awarded the rainforest communities (and lawyers) $19 billion. It was hailed as one of the most significant environmental victories in decades.

There is an avalanche of evidence that the lawsuit was spurious, including a video with pertinent green activists speaking in an off the record setting laughingly admitting the evidence used against Chevron was a joke. The Ecuadorian judge and politicians were all too happy to use the green lawsuit as an excuse to gouge money from a huge oil company. Chevron is fighting back, countersuing the activists.

James Delingpole contends it’s time we stopped viewing environmentalists as harmless do-gooders trying to “save the world.”

It troubles me because those few of us who are prepared to research and speak the truth on these issues face an uphill struggle in getting our message across. This is why, unfortunately, the usual response of big business when subjected to greenmail by environmentalist pressure groups is to cave in and try to buy them off – in much the same way as the Anglo Saxons did when they tried warding off the Vikings with Danegeld. Big business is risk averse and can see no point going into battle with the one hand tied behind its back, even when it has right on its side. Which, after all, is the public instinctively more likely to trust: a dirty, great Big Oil company or an apparently grassroots protest organisation comprising principled, skinny, bearded vegan blokes and cute-looking activist girls who aren’t in it for the money but because they just want to make the world a better place?

What encourages me about the Chevron case – and indeed, the success of Phelim McAleer’s and Ann McIlhenny’s pro-fracking movie – is that the tide appears to be turning. Finally, business is standing up for the right of business to do business; finally, people are starting to come round to the idea that maybe all those Green activists out there aren’t quite as representative of our interests as they tell us on their posters and in their press releases. Since when was it in our interests to have our energy bills continually driven up by eco-taxes and renewable energy subsidies, not to mention the legal costs organisations like Chevron have accrued trying to fight off this $19 billion claim? How exactly is our economic welfare increased by the $1 billion being squandered every day combating the largely illusory problem of “climate change”? How, in God’s name, have the people of Brighton benefited in any way from voting Green?

As I note in Watermelons – and it really can’t be said often enough – the Greens (and that includes small “g” greens too) are not our friends. I’m not saying they are intrinsically bad people; I know that in many cases that they are motivated by the highest of ideals. The problem is that the consequences of their noble lies and their warped ideology invariably involve economic recession, higher prices, constrained freedom, thwarted aspirations and widespread human suffering. I don’t call those results good. I’d say they’re downright evil.

There’s no stronger voice out there exposing the money-making, power-grabbing schemes of Big Green than British James Delingpole, who sees the United States as the world’s last hope against socialism that uses environmentalism to impose one-world government.